FIRST DAY

1.
Who wanted me
to go to Chicago
on January 6th?
I did!

The night before,
20 below zero
Fahrenheit
with the wind chill;
as the blizzard of 99
lay in mountains
of blackening snow.

I packed two coats,
two suits,
three sweaters,
multiple sets of long johns
and heavy white socks
for a two-day stay.

I left from Newark.
**** the denseness,
it confounds!

The 2nd City to whom?
2nd ain’t bad.
It’s pretty good.
If you consider
Peking and Prague,
Tokyo and Togo,
Manchester and Moscow,
Port Au Prince and Paris,
Athens and Amsterdam,
Buenos Aries and Johannesburg;
that’s pretty good.

What’s going on here today?
It’s friggin frozen.
To the bone!

But Chi Town is still cool.
Buddy Guy’s is open.
Bartenders mixing drinks,
cabbies jamming on their breaks,
honey dew waitresses serving sugar,
buildings swerving,
fire tongued preachers are preaching
and the farmers are measuring the moon.

The lake,
unlike Ontario
is in the midst of freezing.
Bones of ice
threaten to gel
into a solid mass
over the expanse
of the Michigan Lake.
If this keeps up,
you can walk
clear to Toronto
on a silver carpet.

Along the shore
the ice is permanent.
It’s the first big frost
of winter
after a long
Indian Summer.

Thank God
I caught a cab.
Outside I hear
The Hawk
nippin hard.
It’ll get your ear,
finger or toe.
Bite you on the nose too
if you ain’t careful.

Thank God,
I’m not walking
the Wabash tonight;
but if you do cover up,
wear layers.

Chicago,
could this be
Sandburg’s City?

I’m overwhelmed
and this is my tenth time here.

It’s almost better,
sometimes it is better,
a lot of times it is better
and denser then New York.

Ask any Bull’s fan.
I’m a Knickerbocker.
Yes Nueva York,
a city that has placed last
in the standings
for many years.
Except the last two.
Yanks are # 1!

But Chicago
is a dynasty,
as big as
Sammy Sosa’s heart,
rich and wide
as Michael Jordan’s grin.

Middle of a country,
center of a continent,
smack dab in the mean
of a hemisphere,
vortex to a world,
Chicago!

Kansas City,
Nashville,
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh,
Denver,
New Orleans,
Dallas,
Cairo,
Singapore,
Auckland,
Baghdad,
Mexico City
and Montreal
salute her.



2.
Cities,
A collection of vanities?
Engineered complex utilitarianism?
The need for community a social necessity?
Ego one with the mass?
Civilization’s latest *******?
Chicago is more then that.

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer
is long gone
but this capitol
of the Great Plains
is still democratic.

The citizen’s of this city
would vote daily,
if they could.

Chicago,
Sandburg’s Chicago,
Could it be?

The namesake river
segments the city,
canals of commerce,
all perpendicular,
is rife throughout,
still guiding barges
to the Mississippi
and St. Laurence.

Now also
tourist attractions
for a cafe society.

Chicago is really jazzy,
swanky clubs,
big steaks,
juices and drinks.

You get the best
coffee from Seattle
and the finest teas
from China.

Great restaurants
serve liquid jazz
al la carte.

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they serve is Jazz
Rock me steady
Keep the beat
Keep it flowin
Feel the heat!

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they is, is Jazz
Fast cars will take ya
To the show
Round bout midnight
Where’d the time go?

Flows into the Mississippi,
the mother of America’s rivers,
an empires aorta.

Great Lakes wonder of water.
Niagara Falls
still her heart gushes forth.

Buffalo connected to this holy heart.
Finger Lakes and Adirondacks
are part of this watershed,
all the way down to the
Delaware and Chesapeake.

Sandburg’s Chicago?
Oh my my,
the wonder of him.
Who captured the imagination
of the wonders of rivers.

Down stream other holy cities
from the Mississippi delta
all mapped by him.

Its mouth our Dixie Trumpet
guarded by righteous Cajun brethren.

Midwest?
Midwest from where?
It’s north of Caracas and Los Angeles,
east of Fairbanks,
west of Dublin
and south of not much.

Him,
who spoke of honest men
and loving women.
Working men and mothers
bearing citizens to build a nation.
The New World’s
precocious adolescent
caught in a stream
of endless and exciting change,
much pain and sacrifice,
dedication and loss,
pride and tribulations.

From him we know
all the people’s faces.
All their stories are told.
Never defeating the
idea of Chicago.

Sandburg had the courage to say
what was in the heart of the people, who:

Defeated the Indians,
Mapped the terrain,
Aided slavers,
Fought a terrible civil war,
Hoisted the barges,
Grew the food,
Whacked the wheat,
Sang the songs,
Fought many wars of conquest,
Cleared the land,
Erected the bridges,
Trapped the game,
Netted the fish,
Mined the coal,
Forged the steel,
Laid the tracks,
Fired the tenders,
Cut the stone,
Mixed the mortar,
Plumbed the line,
And laid the bricks
Of this nation of cities!

Pardon the Marlboro Man shtick.
It’s a poor expostulation of
crass commercial symbolism.

Like I said, I’m a
Devil Fan from Jersey
and Madison Avenue
has done its work on me.

It’s a strange alchemy
that changes
a proud Nation of Blackhawks
into a merchandising bonanza
of hometown hockey shirts,
making the native seem alien,
and the interloper at home chillin out,
warming his feet atop a block of ice,
guzzling Old Style
with clicker in hand.

Give him his beer
and other diversions.
If he bowls with his buddy’s
on Tuesday night
I hope he bowls
a perfect game.

He’s earned it.
He works hard.
Hard work and faith
built this city.

And it’s not just the faith
that fills the cities
thousand churches,
temples and
mosques on the Sabbath.

3.
There is faith in everything in Chicago!

An alcoholic broker named Bill
lives the Twelve Steps
to banish fear and loathing
for one more day.
Bill believes in sobriety.

A tug captain named Moe
waits for the spring thaw
so he can get the barges up to Duluth.
Moe believes in the seasons.

A farmer named Tom
hopes he has reaped the last
of many bitter harvests.
Tom believes in a new start.

A homeless man named Earl
wills himself a cot and a hot
at the local shelter.
Earl believes in deliverance.

A Pullman porter
named George
works overtime
to get his first born
through medical school.
George believes in opportunity.

A folk singer named Woody
sings about his
countrymen inheritance
and implores them to take it.
Woody believes in people.

A Wobbly named Joe
organizes fellow steelworkers
to fight for a workers paradise
here on earth.
Joe believes in ideals.

A bookkeeper named Edith
is certain she’ll see the Cubs
win the World Series
in her lifetime.
Edith believes in miracles.

An electrician named ****
saves money
to bring his family over from Gdansk.
**** believes in America.

A banker named Leah
knows Ditka will return
and lead the Bears
to another Super Bowl.
Leah believes in nostalgia.

A cantor named Samuel
prays for another 20 years
so he can properly train
his Temple’s replacement.

Samuel believes in tradition.
A high school girl named Sally
refuses to get an abortion.
She knows she carries
something special within her.
Sally believes in life.

A city worker named Mazie
ceaselessly prays
for her incarcerated son
doing 10 years at Cook.
Mazie believes in redemption.

A jazzer named Bix
helps to invent a new art form
out of the mist.
Bix believes in creativity.

An architect named Frank
restores the Rookery.
Frank believes in space.

A soldier named Ike
fights wars for democracy.
Ike believes in peace.

A Rabbi named Jesse
sermonizes on Moses.
Jesse believes in liberation.

Somewhere in Chicago
a kid still believes in Shoeless Joe.
The kid believes in
the integrity of the game.

An Imam named Louis
is busy building a nation
within a nation.
Louis believes in
self-determination.

A teacher named Heidi
gives all she has to her students.
She has great expectations for them all.
Heidi believes in the future.

4.
Does Chicago have a future?

This city,
full of cowboys
and wildcatters
is predicated
on a future!

Bang, bang
Shoot em up
Stake the claim
It’s your terrain
Drill the hole
Strike it rich
Top it off
You’re the boss
Take a chance
Watch it wane
Try again
Heavenly gains

Chicago
city of futures
is a Holy Mecca
to all day traders.

Their skin is gray,
hair disheveled,
loud ties and
funny coats,
thumb through
slips of paper
held by nail
chewed hands.
Selling promises
with no derivative value
for out of the money calls
and in the money puts.
Strike is not a labor action
in this city of unionists,
but a speculators mark,
a capitalist wish,
a hedgers bet,
a public debt
and a farmers
fair return.

Indexes for everything.
Quantitative models
that could burst a kazoo.

You know the measure
of everything in Chicago.
But is it truly objective?
Have mathematics banished
subjective intentions,
routing it in fair practice
of market efficiencies,
a kind of scientific absolution?

I heard that there
is a dispute brewing
over the amount of snowfall
that fell on the 1st.

The mayor’s office,
using the official city ruler
measured 22”
of snow on the ground.

The National Weather Service
says it cannot detect more
then 17” of snow.

The mayor thinks
he’ll catch less heat
for the trains that don’t run
the buses that don’t arrive
and the schools that stand empty
with the addition of 5”.

The analysts say
it’s all about capturing liquidity.

Liquidity,
can you place a great lake
into an eyedropper?

Its 20 below
and all liquid things
are solid masses
or a gooey viscosity at best.

Water is frozen everywhere.
But Chi town is still liquid,
flowing faster
then the digital blips
flashing on the walls
of the CBOT.

Dreams
are never frozen in Chicago.
The exchanges trade
without missing a beat.

Trading wet dreams,
the crystallized vapor
of an IPO
pledging a billion points
of Internet access
or raiding the public treasuries
of a central bank’s
huge stores of gold
with currency swaps.

Using the tools
of butterfly spreads
and candlesticks
to achieve the goal.

Short the Russell
or buy the Dow,
go long the
CAC and DAX.
Are you trading in euro’s?
You better be
or soon will.
I know
you’re Chicago,
you’ll trade anything.
WEBS,
Spiders,
and Leaps
are traded here,
along with sweet crude,
North Sea Brent,
plywood and T-Bill futures;
and most importantly
the commodities,
the loam
that formed this city
of broad shoulders.

What about our wheat?
Still whacking and
breadbasket to the world.

Oil,
an important fossil fuel
denominated in
good ole greenbacks.

Porkbellies,
not just hogwash
on the Wabash,
but bacon, eggs
and flapjacks
are on the menu
of every diner in Jersey
as the “All American.”

Cotton,
our contribution
to the Golden Triangle,
once the global currency
used to enrich a
gentlemen class
of cultured
southern slavers,
now Tommy Hilfiger’s
preferred fabric.

I think he sends it
to Bangkok where
child slaves
spin it into
gold lame'.

Sorghum,
I think its hardy.

Soybeans,
the new age substitute
for hamburger
goes great with tofu lasagna.

Corn,
ADM creates ethanol,
they want us to drive cleaner cars.

Cattle,
once driven into this city’s
bloodhouses for slaughter,
now ground into
a billion Big Macs
every year.

When does a seed
become a commodity?
When does a commodity
become a future?
When does a future expire?

You can find the answers
to these questions in Chicago
and find a fortune in a hole in the floor.

Look down into the pits.
Hear the screams of anguish
and profitable delights.

Frenzied men
swarming like a mass
of epileptic ants
atop the worlds largest sugar cube
auger the worlds free markets.

The scene is
more chaotic then
100 Haymarket Square Riots
multiplied by 100
1968 Democratic Conventions.

Amidst inverted anthills,
they scurry forth and to
in distinguished
black and red coats.

Fighting each other
as counterparties
to a life and death transaction.

This is an efficient market
that crosses the globe.

Oil from the Sultan of Brunei,
Yen from the land of Hitachi,
Long Bonds from the Fed,
nickel from Quebec,
platinum and palladium
from Siberia,
FTSE’s from London
and crewel cane from Havana
circle these pits.

Tijuana,
Shanghai
and Istanbul's
best traders
are only half as good
as the average trader in Chicago.

Chicago,
this hog butcher to the world,
specializes in packaging and distribution.

Men in blood soaked smocks,
still count the heads
entering the gates of the city.

Their handiwork
is sent out on barges
and rail lines as frozen packages
of futures
waiting for delivery
to an anonymous counterparty
half a world away.

This nation’s hub
has grown into the
premier purveyor
to the world;
along all the rivers,
highways,
railways
and estuaries
it’s tentacles reach.

5.
Sandburg’s Chicago,
is a city of the world’s people.

Many striver rows compose
its many neighborhoods.

Nordic stoicism,
Eastern European orthodoxy
and Afro-American
calypso vibrations
are three of many cords
strumming the strings
of Chicago.

Sandburg’s Chicago,
if you wrote forever
you would only scratch its surface.

People wait for trains
to enter the city from O’Hare.
Frozen tears
lock their eyes
onto distant skyscrapers,
solid chunks
of snot blocks their nose
and green icicles of slime
crust mustaches.
They fight to breathe.

Sandburg’s Chicago
is The Land of Lincoln,
Savior of the Union,
protector of the Republic.
Sent armies
of sons and daughters,
barges, boxcars,
gunboats, foodstuffs,
cannon and shot
to raze the south
and stamp out succession.

Old Abe’s biography
are still unknown volumes to me.
I must see and read the great words.
You can never learn enough;
but I’ve been to Washington
and seen the man’s memorial.
The Free World’s 8th wonder,
guarded by General Grant,
who still keeps an eye on Richmond
and a hand on his sword.

Through this American winter
Abe ponders.
The vista he surveys is dire and tragic.

Our sitting President
impeached
for lying about a *******.

Party partisans
in the senate are sworn and seated.
Our Chief Justice,
adorned with golden bars
will adjudicate the proceedings.
It is the perfect counterpoint
to an ageless Abe thinking
with malice toward none
and charity towards all,
will heal the wounds
of the nation.

Abe our granite angel,
Chicago goes on,
The Union is strong!


SECOND DAY

1.
Out my window
the sun has risen.

According to
the local forecast
its minus 9
going up to
6 today.

The lake,
a golden pillow of clouds
is frozen in time.

I marvel
at the ancients ones
resourcefulness
and how
they mastered
these extreme elements.

Past, present and future
has no meaning
in the Citadel
of the Prairie today.

I set my watch
to Central Standard Time.

Stepping into
the hotel lobby
the concierge
with oil smooth hair,
perfect tie
and English lilt
impeccably asks,
“Do you know where you are going Sir?
Can I give you a map?”

He hands me one of Chicago.
I see he recently had his nails done.
He paints a green line
along Whacker Drive and says,
“turn on Jackson, LaSalle, Wabash or Madison
and you’ll get to where you want to go.”
A walk of 14 or 15 blocks from Streeterville-
(I start at The Chicago White House.
They call it that because Hillary Rodham
stays here when she’s in town.
Its’ also alleged that Stedman
eats his breakfast here
but Opra
has never been seen
on the premises.
I wonder how I gained entry
into this place of elite’s?)
-down into the center of The Loop.

Stepping out of the hotel,
The Doorman
sporting the epaulets of a colonel
on his corporate winter coat
and furry Cossack hat
swaddling his round black face
accosts me.

The skin of his face
is flaking from
the subzero windburn.

He asks me
with a gapped toothy grin,
“Can I get you a cab?”
“No I think I’ll walk,” I answer.
“Good woolen hat,
thick gloves you should be alright.”
He winks and lets me pass.

I step outside.
The Windy City
flings stabbing cold spears
flying on wings of 30-mph gusts.
My outside hardens.
I can feel the freeze
deepen
into my internalness.
I can’t be sure
but inside
my heart still feels warm.
For how long
I cannot say.

I commence
my walk
among the spires
of this great city,
the vertical leaps
that anchor the great lake,
holding its place
against the historic
frigid assault.

The buildings’ sway,
modulating to the blows
of natures wicked blasts.

It’s a hard imposition
on a city and its people.

The gloves,
skullcap,
long underwear,
sweater,
jacket
and overcoat
not enough
to keep the cold
from penetrating
the person.

Like discerning
the layers of this city,
even many layers,
still not enough
to understand
the depth of meaning
of the heart
of this heartland city.

Sandburg knew the city well.
Set amidst groves of suburbs
that extend outward in every direction.
Concentric circles
surround the city.
After the burbs come farms,
Great Plains, and mountains.
Appalachians and Rockies
are but mere molehills
in the city’s back yard.
It’s terra firma
stops only at the sea.
Pt. Barrow to the Horn,
many capes extended.

On the periphery
its appendages,
its extremities,
its outward extremes.
All connected by the idea,
blown by the incessant wind
of this great nation.
The Windy City’s message
is sent to the world’s four corners.
It is a message of power.
English the worlds
common language
is spoken here,
along with Ebonics,
Espanol,
Mandarin,
Czech,
Russian,
Korean,
Arabic,
Hindi­,
German,
French,
electronics,
steel,
cars,
cartoons,
rap,
sports­,
movies,
capital,
wheat
and more.

Always more.
Much much more
in Chicago.

2.
Sandburg
spoke all the dialects.

He heard them all,
he understood
with great precision
to the finest tolerances
of a lathe workers micrometer.

Sandburg understood
what it meant to laugh
and be happy.

He understood
the working mans day,
the learned treatises
of university chairs,
the endless tomes
of the city’s
great libraries,
the lost languages
of the ancient ones,
the secret codes
of abstract art,
the impact of architecture,
the street dialects and idioms
of everymans expression of life.

All fighting for life,
trying to build a life,
a new life
in this modern world.

Walking across
the Michigan Avenue Bridge
I see the Wrigley Building
is neatly carved,
catty cornered on the plaza.

I wonder if Old Man Wrigley
watched his barges
loaded with spearmint
and double-mint
move out onto the lake
from one of those Gothic windows
perched high above the street.

Would he open a window
and shout to the men below
to quit slaking and work harder
or would he
between the snapping sound
he made with his mouth
full of his chewing gum
offer them tickets
to a ballgame at Wrigley Field
that afternoon?

Would the men below
be able to understand
the man communing
from such a great height?

I listen to a man
and woman conversing.
They are one step behind me
as we meander along Wacker Drive.

"You are in Chicago now.”
The man states with profundity.
“If I let you go
you will soon find your level
in this city.
Do you know what I mean?”

No I don’t.
I think to myself.
What level are you I wonder?
Are you perched atop
the transmission spire
of the Hancock Tower?

I wouldn’t think so
or your ears would melt
from the windburn.

I’m thinking.
Is she a kept woman?
She is majestically clothed
in fur hat and coat.
In animal pelts
not trapped like her,
but slaughtered
from farms
I’m sure.

What level
is he speaking of?

Many levels
are evident in this city;
many layers of cobbled stone,
Pennsylvania iron,
Hoosier Granite
and vertical drops.

I wonder
if I detect
condensation
in his voice?

What is
his intention?
Is it a warning
of a broken affair?
A pending pink slip?
Advise to an addict
refusing to adhere
to a recovery regimen?

What is his level anyway?
Is he so high and mighty,
Higher and mightier
then this great city
which we are all a part of,
which we all helped to build,
which we all need
in order to keep this nation
the thriving democratic
empire it is?

This seditious talk!

3.
The Loop’s El
still courses through
the main thoroughfares of the city.

People are transported
above the din of the street,
looking down
on the common pedestrians
like me.

Super CEO’s
populating the upper floors
of Romanesque,
Greek Revivalist,
New Bauhaus,
Art Deco
and Post Nouveau
Neo-Modern
Avant-Garde towers
are too far up
to see me
shivering on the street.

The cars, busses,
trains and trucks
are all covered
with the film
of rock salt.

Salt covers
my bootless feet
and smudges
my cloths as well.

The salt,
the primal element
of the earth
covers everything
in Chicago.

It is the true level
of this city.

The layer
beneath
all layers,
on which
everything
rests,
is built,
grows,
thrives
then dies.
To be
returned again
to the lower
layers
where it can
take root
again
and grow
out onto
the great plains.

Splashing
the nation,
anointing
its people
with its
blessing.

A blessing,
Chicago?

All rivers
come here.

All things
found its way here
through the canals
and back bays
of the world’s
greatest lakes.

All roads,
rails and
air routes
begin and
end here.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
got a *** rap.
It did not start the fire,
we did.

We lit the torch
that flamed
the city to cinders.
From a pile of ash
Chicago rose again.

Forever Chicago!
Forever the lamp
that burns bright
on a Great Lake’s
western shore!

Chicago
the beacon
sends the
message to the world
with its windy blasts,
on chugging barges,
clapping trains,
flying tandems,
T1 circuits
and roaring jets.

Sandburg knew
a Chicago
I will never know.

He knew
the rhythm of life
the people walked to.
The tools they used,
the dreams they dreamed
the songs they sang,
the things they built,
the things they loved,
the pains that hurt,
the motives that grew,
the actions that destroyed
the prayers they prayed,
the food they ate
their moments of death.

Sandburg knew
the layers of the city
to the depths
and windy heights
I cannot fathom.

The Blues
came to this city,
on the wing
of a chirping bird,
on the taps
of a rickety train,
on the blast
of an angry sax
rushing on the wind,
on the Westend blitz
of Pop's brash coronet,
on the tink of
a twinkling piano
on a paddle-wheel boat
and on the strings
of a lonely man’s guitar.

Walk into the clubs,
tenements,
row houses,
speakeasies
and you’ll hear the Blues
whispered like
a quiet prayer.

Tidewater Blues
from Virginia,
Delta Blues
from the lower
Mississippi,
Boogie Woogie
from Appalachia,
Texas Blues
from some Lone Star,
Big Band Blues
from Kansas City,
Blues from
Beal Street,
Jelly Roll’s Blues
from the Latin Quarter.

Hell even Chicago
got its own brand
of Blues.

Its all here.
It ended up here
and was sent away
on the winds of westerly blows
to the ear of an eager world
on strong jet streams
of simple melodies
and hard truths.

A broad
shouldered woman,
a single mother stands
on the street
with three crying babes.
Their cloths
are covered
in salt.
She pleads
for a break,
praying
for a new start.
Poor and
under-clothed
against the torrent
of frigid weather
she begs for help.
Her blond hair
and ****** features
suggests her
Scandinavian heritage.
I wonder if
she is related to Sandburg
as I walk past
her on the street.
Her feet
are bleeding
through her
canvass sneakers.
Her babes mouths
are zipped shut
with frozen drivel
and mucous.

The Blues live
on in Chicago.

The Blues
will forever live in her.
As I turn the corner
to walk the Miracle Mile
I see her engulfed
in a funnel cloud of salt,
snow and bits
of white paper,
swirling around her
and her children
in an angry
unforgiving
maelstrom.

The family
begins to
dissolve
like a snail
sprinkled with salt;
and a mother
and her children
just disappear
into the pavement
at the corner
of Dearborn,
in Chicago.

Music:

Robert Johnson
Sweet Home Chicago


jbm
Chicago
1/7/99

Chad looked over at his sleeping son sitting next to him in the passenger seat. This little journey from the airport to his home still seemed so strange and uneasy to him. It astounded him that Ian was now twelve years old, nearly a teenager. To be honest, he still did not fully feel sure about this arrangement, this set-up for him to have his son for the summer. Nevertheless, he tried to project confidence to everyone involved, to his family and to Ian's mom. He kept reminding himself that it did not matter how he felt.

He needed to step up to the plate.

No, Chad Brewster never envisioned himself as a father, never dreamed of it, and certainly never once desired it or would have chosen it as his path. Though some of his close friends wanted or had a family, it was never a part of his plans to ever be a dad. He did not dislike children, but he just never expected he would ever settle down and have them.

He especially never expected to be a father at the mere age of sixteen years old.

The suburbs of Las Vegas were worlds away from the suburbs of Milwaukee. Driving down the desert surrounded streets and highways, sometimes homesickness tugged at his consciousness. At times, Chad’s craved the surroundings of his old existence—the shady pine trees, and spending time at Lake Michigan—and he would gladly trade some palm trees for the some of the pines he was so accustomed to. But this was the life he now chose to have, and he thought he should have no reason to complain or be too sentimental. Many people were not so lucky to experience any refreshing change in their lives, and he was able to have it.

While on the road, Chad reminded himself to give Ian's mom, Becca, a quick call to let her know that they were on their way to his home. He pulled out his cell phone before he got distracted. Ian already texted her a few times to let her know he was alive and breathing along the way.

Becca had her reservations about sending her son off to be with his dad. He had his visiting rights, though, and she couldn't lawfully deny him them. It was a tough decision to send him off alone on the plane to meet up with his father, but Ian had good sense, and he was taking a direct flight to Vegas. He loved to text, and his mother made sure he had his very own cell phone to keep in constant contact with her. It was so hard to let him go like this, for Becca cherished Ian. He had a much harder start in life than some other kids, and she felt partly to blame for it.

Chad got a hold of Ian’s mom. "No way in Hell! You are calling me now?" she angrily accused him, her tongue sharp with criticism. "You know **** well this is his very first plane trip by himself, and I thought you'd have the decency to tell me once he got off that plane! Please! Don't try to convince me that this whole thing is a huge mistake, some major lapse in my judgment. Can you do that for me? You could have at least had the decency! Put him on the phone! Let me talk to him!"

"Look, Becca, he's asleep. It was a long day for him. He's exhausted". Chad was trying his best to hold back any displeasure or to raise his voice, but he expected his calm wouldn’t last. "Don't ***** me out for not calling you the very second you are demanding. You know I would have called in a heartbeat if I felt Ian was in danger. You know I would".

"Oh, I'm really not so sure", she replied, sarcastically. "I'm tempted to fly over there and come get him! I've been sick about it all day!"

"Such a **** drama queen, Becca! Like it or not, the world doesn't revolve around you! You don't have all the control! “ The anger rising was rising up in his tone. Her judgment of him of was so tiring.

"Oh, really Chad?" she replied. "I've got my act together a long time ago, but you...".

"Look, he is my son, too!" Chad shouted loudly. He was fed up of her ****** attitude, ready to hang up in her face.

"You could have fooled me!"

His eyes were glaring as he drove down the arid Nevada highway, just as if Becca stood there right before him, her finger wagging in his face, her other hand on her hip. He pictured her now as if time and everything in it had stood still, and she was before his motionless car and in his face, still in step with time and letting him have it.

This little display was so typical of her. Only Becca Morgan thought she ever had any common sense when it came to their parental abilities. Sure, she was the one who really raised their son, but she never would have pulled it off without the huge intervention of her mother.

Without a doubt, Ian had to admit to himself that he had been avoidant and immature in the past, but Becca did not have the patent on good parenting or on maturity. In her eyes, Chad was never going to be a proper father, even if he proved it.

Chad vowed that he wasn't going to pay forever for his mistakes of being an absent father, far more absent than present in his young son's life.

He looked over at his son sitting beside him. Ian was sound asleep—thank God—for he heard his parents squabble about him far more than he should have. In fact, he never saw his parents talking in a friendly manner. No matter how they began talking to each other, their conversations always ended up with angry words.

Ian must have been dead tired to sleep through it all. He hardly stirred since he fell asleep. If Chad wasn’t driving, he would be studying his slumbering son in peculiar wonder, sitting there for quite some time and thinking how on earth he ever was able to produce such a child, a seemingly healthy and well-rounded boy. It was as if his child was an UFO alien, or something—someone to be discovered for who he really was, and someone to be fathomed with fear.  He felt that uncomfortable about being placed into the role of a father.

It gave Chad's stomach a funny, odd feeling to think he wasn't too much older than Ian when Becca—his loving girlfriend at the time—came up to him and told him the shocking news. It would be the news that would forever change his life, and hers.

She was pregnant. Chad was definitely the father.

It wasn't that Becca did not know what to do about her condition, for she knew what she wanted from almost the very start, and she had settled it in her mind without much inner conflict. There was no helplessness or hopelessness in her, not like some pregnant teenage girls that found themselves in such a predicament. She wanted to have her baby and keep it to raise as her very own, and not for a future adoption—with or without Chad's approval. She did love Chad, but in the long run, she did not care what he thought if he did not agree with her.

As far as she was concerned, this baby was hers.

Chad, on the other hand, was terrified, simply terrified. He did not want to believe the news, hoping that Becca would turn around and tell him it was a huge joke. He would be quite ticked at her if she did such a thing, but also very relieved. He would gladly kiss the ground for it not to be true.

If only it was a joke. Becca was quite serious, playing  no such prank on him, Next, she planned to tell her mother next about her unborn baby. But the first person she wanted to tell was her boyfriend, and she expected that he would be on her side—or at least be won over eventually.

As a dumbfounded Chad stared at her in disbelief and shock—like the classic deer in the headlights—Becca insisted that she was telling the truth, that she was even beginning to show. She could prove it.  Her periods had stopped, and three home pregnancy tests confirmed her suspicions.  Gently, she took Chad’s hand to place over her stomach. Freaked out of his mind, he ****** his hand away as quickly as it touched her belly. His knee **** reaction would always stick in Becca's mind of how Chad really felt about her. It was almost like she had a disease.

She suddenly felt dejected. It looked like Chad would not be on her side, after all.

Maybe it wasn't his? Chad knew that Becca would hate him if he ever implied such a thing. She was crazy about him. Chad knew that. But she had an equal amount of passion to go the other way if he betrayed her. The doubt on his face, and the hesitancy in his voice, did betray him and Becca’s heart slowly sank. She wanted Chad to care, to understand, certainly not to view her as the guilty partner who was ready to ruin his life.

Instead, it looked like the beginning of the end for them.

No way was Chad willing to break the news to his parents, especially his dad, Ed Brewster. He’d rather put a gun to his head than say anything about it. Chad really never saw eye to eye with his father.  Unlike his two older brothers, Michael and David, Chad always felt like he could never please the man. His mother, Nancy, had forever seen Chad as the role that life had given him—the baby of the family. He seemed to have more leeway with her, but not so much as an inch with his father.

Ed, a veteran police officer, wanted all three of his sons to do well in life, better than he had achieved. And as Michael and David were dreaming of such careers as doctors and lawyers, all Chad ever dreamed of was to be a drummer in a rock band. Playing the drums was fine for a hobby, but Chad's father wanted his son to see the garage band he played in as something temporary, something to grow out of.  His son saw otherwise, never seeing himself ever retiring his drumsticks for some job he was bored to death with, or that he hated. He didn’t care if he would never end up earning a dime from it, not playing the drums would be like not having arms or legs. Chad would never give up on his musical aspirations.

One of the first photos that his mother took of her youngest son was him as a baby, sitting on the floor in the kitchen and banging a ladle on the bottom of a pan. At that age, he would much rather play with kitchen utensils, using them like a drum, than any shiny, fascinating toy in his possession. His mom simply thought it was adorable. His father wasn't so impressed, especially since the racket he made was only the beginning in his musical journey of too much noise surfacing from the basement.  There would be plenty of times when Ed would warn his son to give the drums a rest, or he would throw them in the garbage, for Chad could practice for hours on end.

It seemed that music flowed in Chad's blood, was natural to him, but no one in the family had any such musical talents or ambitions.  While his father just didn't get it, his mother supported him with any help she could. When he was six, he was in his glory when his she bought him a child's drum set to bang on. When he turned eleven, she bought him a real set of drums, and encouraged his participation in school band. His brothers' interests were far more typical. They were heavy into sports, and they always had their father's blessings. When Chad kept on doing what he loved, he was seen by his dad as almost a delinquent.

Now that he was an adult, his love of music was paying off. Resettling in Vegas provided many opportunities, plenty of musical venues. With all the entertainment in Sin City, Chad could find enough work playing the drums. There has been a good flow of steady work for him to work in the casinos, and he also played in a local band that did such gigs as weddings, birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. They were a group of six talented musicians that got together to form their own band, and play just about anything—rock, rap, blues, jazz, country and swing. They soon voted with each other on what to call themselves. A good name had a lot to do with if someone got hired for gigs, and nothing they could think up sounded any good.  It seemed like all the great names were already taken, nothing new under the sun. The Sonic Waves sounded the coolest, but since that name was already used, Chad played around with the idea and suggested they call themselves Sonic Stream. That had good potential, and the others agreed with it. He was glad and honored to make such a contribution to his band.        

Chad could honestly say he was happy out here in Nevada. His mother felt like he was trying his best to distance himself from the reality of his problems, especially his strained relationship with his father. Chad disagreed. He just wanted to feel like he could accomplish something in his life, not proving anything to anybody—but to himself.

Would Ian be happy out here with him? It would only be for the summer, but would Chad make a good impression on him in his life out here? Ian glanced over at his son who still slept almost like a baby, seemingly wiped out, though the day was still young.

Several minutes later, Ian called out, "What time is it?"

Somehow awakened, he was rubbing his eyes, disoriented by the fact that he was in a different time zone and in an unfamiliar place. Chad smiled at him, trying to reassure the boy that he was glad to have him here.

“Almost two thirty", Chad returned. Ian moaned and tried to sit up straight, squinting from the glare of the strong Nevada sun. Quite groggy, his internal clock was not sure what time it was.

Your mom called”, Chad told Ian. “You know your mom, bud. She does worry about you”.

“I texted Mom. I said I made it OK”, he replied.

“But did you actually talk to her?” Chad asked. “You know how she is. Unless she talked to you herself, I am sure she was convinced some madman took control of your cell phone and pretended to be you”.

Chad laughed and Ian tried not to act like what he said was that funny, but he shyly grinned and tried to cover his mouth to conceal it. He did have a special bond with his mother, but he knew his dad was right. His mom worried way too much.

“I talked to her just before the plane took off”, Ian admitted.

They drove in silence for a while. Chad had to admit to himself that Ian was looking more and more like him the more he grew up, and Chad seemed to favor his mother's looks—of which he was grateful—for he never wanted to resemble his dad.  Lots of times, Chad and Ian were mistaken for brothers, Ian a much younger brother, but surely not imagined to be his son. Chad felt that Ian was already looking like a teenager, maturing fast for his age, and Chad often was perceived as younger than his twenty-eight years. Ian was growing up so much more than his father could envision, and Chad knew why. It wasn't like he saw his son so frequently that the change was not obvious. Every time he saw him, a big gap had been gapped by growth and change, and Chad was guilty of missing much of those experiences.

Was it that Chad did not really want to grow up? Becca surely accused him of that. His father did, too. Performing gigs in a local band seemed far from a man's job to Chad's father. When he still lived in Wisconsin, he knew he had better learn to have other work to fall back on, for band work did not always pay the bills in those days. That is why he trained to be an x-ray technician. It wasn't the job of his dreams, but it helped keep him afloat when making money from music did not meet his financial requirements. Even though Chad did achieve a fairly decent and respectable job, it did not seem to matter to his critical father.

At the mere age of sixteen, Chad had nothing to back him up against the anger his father would have towards him. He knew he would be knocked down for sure when his parents found out about Becca's pregnancy.

The words his furious father told him stung pretty harshly. "You don't have the sense to be a father! You don't seem lately to have the sense to be anything! You'd ruin that kid’s life, for sure!"

His father had to always play the street-smart cop, even at home, and Chad was fed up as looking like a criminal in his eyes. He almost wanted to cry, but refused to show his father any such weakness. Instead, he gave him the best stone cold, unemotional response that he could muster up. Replying in a monotone manner, though he really feared his father's anger, was the best way to stick it back to him.

"Sure, you're right. I take after you. Bad fathering runs in the family", he said back.

Ed looked like he wanted to punch his son, though he never laid a hand on any of his sons in such a way. Trying to repress his own sense of hurt, and remain with his anger, he replied, "If you were eighteen, I'd throw your *** out right now! Don't push your luck!"

Chad always aspire

Floating above the rifts of apperception I glaze over the gaudy faucets of imagined vector thrusts in hibernation by the lucubration of space-time materialized crystal in the somber beats of fetched farrago of choice slices in delicate hums of hemmed balance rantipole only in ethereal importance but otherwise supersolid above the sprauncy vagrancy of dilettantism. We shout a clarion virtuosity so that the conclamation of neovitalism conjures upon a spell of lapse and regress a motive for further crystallization of epidemiology into harmony with syndicated admonition sleek in design and parceled into renown by feats of completion rather than slugabed gregarious fountains of wasted ingenuity bleeding from the vacuum of an empty hearth in a hospitable dwelling otherwise cleared of imperfection. Right now, I levitate with transcendence with an approximated eidetic memory that is the surgical vibrancy of renewal rather than the chameleons of hidden talents buried by the walls of Jericho sounding tocsins of alarm that the anointed favor of choice destruction is only an encircled rapture of rhapsodies of confluence found in axiomatic truths ribbed with the futtocks of seaworthy but cauponate recidivism into the donnybrooks of apocryphal revelation preceding the whimsical fall of cascading permanence just as gravity so ordained it. We breathe the life of the ethereal numinous spirit of isangelous repute because we navigate the exquisite cobweb of reconciliation to surpass all understanding in peace what would be a miscegenated carcass of war otherwise apart from the incidental apartheid of the drones of causality ignoring the antecedent reality too much to register fathomed streaks of preventive endeavor because of the scars of a scrappy schlep of the rampicks of ecbolic servitude to moth-eaten star-crossed lovers of the mean menagerie of gutless succor renowned only in tepid rejections of harbingers bequeathed in succession but ignored because of the procession of “Billie Jean” politics.

   The citadel aflame with controversy buttresses carnality by witless contaminants of hidebound scaldabancos of ineffable destitution so craven in eisoptrophobia for their hypostasized indolent fatuousness of capitulation that they are but a minor punctuation in the largesse of centuries to favor audacity in candor over the prevarications of catastrophe to dented human pride against humane dictates of theodicy in fatalism that predestination experimented with its own vaulted verve to find permanent solutions engraved in the agrapha of time to solidify the redintegrated truth of God’s divine stewardship above the quisquilous deism of former regnant centuries of blench and blandishment. We revolt at the specter of rot only when the effluvia of disgust elevates the visceral reality above the utilitarianism of recycled prim nuisances of noisome lineage that yet balk because they are bereft of attention but not a vacant talent and therefore should the subsidies of man surpass the ignorance of appearances he will shrug of the demur of the scrimshank and sharpen his scrivello in the service of redemption found through cultivated prowess of gardens beneath where rivers flow above a cubic centurion of embattled visages of the heavens becoming the rampart for the vestigial clarity of Secret Masters to foresee the bypass that heals decadence and rebukes the formalism of puritan endeavor to sweat with exhaustive patience over the gossamer intertesselations of a ripe reality rather than a groveled fragmentary world shattered too much by exigent metanoia to mount the crenellated catchpole of vigilant enmity towards the stew of listlessness found in epigone and farce more than in organic fortunes. We flip the upheaval of society to squander our proportionate degrees of wealth on the necessity created by dire quandary which enamors by interrogations of pulchritude the verisimilitude of participle ivory dalliance of etched canvasses of simultagnosia for the librations of the liberated rings of betrothed liberation despite profound lurches of the mistetches of ignorance presiding dismally over the hulked disdain of glamborge rather than resselenque.

     The winter is a poor porcine glut of ciconine swelters because the prickly obtuse recoil of the delopes of caution find their permeable balance with a sort of photographic photosynthesis that braves the dearth of reprieve for the reprisal of nostalgic deeds found in the docimasy of riveted reflections because the preordination of God is the superlative champion of the witeless grandeval protectorate of infinite concepts guarded from the parvanimity even of the most strident minds squabbling over the braseros and battues of history as though those funereal stains of lachrymose regret outweigh the traditions of vaunted human progress because they are finicky about importunate pleas of subsidiary injustice rather than fulminations of the modern rebuttal to the disclaimers of an uneven history that shepherds the doubts of nihilism into ripe fruition at the expense of very expensive moral rot for the codlings of urbacity and mendaciloquence used to foment that tribalism of totemic justice. We see in Penuel the wrestling match of specters and heroic giants documented on the ageless pages and we notice the ironic twinges of struggle that kneaded the propriety of gentilian privilege that ultimately fostered an insurrection against chosen bravado among those that sear with zeal beyond the yordim afflictions of yobbery because the Jewish heart is stronger than any calamity even if it departs from the reverence of the colporteurs of the integrated syncretism of the attempted monolith that beseeches polyphiloprogenitive growth in mindset rather than in testy abeyance of forbearance because of known scrutinies into the tropology of wilted facts remanded by curious historicity that crumples without disdain when we memorialize the erasure of scepsis by modern standards of thaumaturgy.

    The minauderies of growth are a repositioned tacit allegiance to the untold fanfare and hearsay immunized against the broach of facetious levity to buoy discordant hearts above fumatoriums of relentless ignorance because coherent masterwork can be cobbled without such lapidary toil and toll on sincere affectations of wizened brevity. The seismic precautions for the forefathers of incidental convergences between expectancy and crystallized history are an ironic intortion of priorities because the heralds and tribunes matched the peerless foresight with the gerrymandered figments of apartheid between the imaginary and the real so that the delicate synchrony of events could unfurl a riveting carapace from the shells of protection even in amiable squalor for its impenitent attrition on the volleys of sensible rumor becoming fashioned in covert bedazzled errors in judgment leading to the triumph of the eventual civilization over the futtocks of the burial of the former trekleador of zenkidu belonging to provincial cadasters found so tucked in the hedges that discernment of frikmag would be an indelible scourge on the biognosy of the diagnosed endeavors that elapsed into remediated circumstances that brave the depths of deontological violation for the breadth of apportioned loaves and two swanky fish earning a place among the miracles of transcendent liberation from articles of decree imperious by sardonic disdain becoming nullified by the histrionics of a delicately staged orchestra that cements human achievement.

       We relish the frescades of a ruffled autumnal reminder of flourish above pothers of the screed of admonition swamped by nostalgic backtracks in the séance with ultimatum of design and the impregnated and carnal lusts of a world pitched in darkness with guarded lambent lights fomenting a perjury against tact for the deliverance of freedom in tacit agreement with owleries that every bonanza be tithed in their favor regardless of hibernation of spoilsports or their subsidiary remarks on indelible quills of invented manufactured realities we crave with desperation rather than cower from in requited nescience urging us to depart from affairs and stagnate the loyalty of fealty above the limber of utility mobilized above levities for solemn remarks and rejoinders. Promulgated above the robotic rubble of staffage haywire in wiredrawn contemplative resonance of tremulous subterfuge vestigial but immediate to the yardsticks of reprehensible malarkey, is the barnstorm for erratic dimples sauntered by the saunas of shelter above the chaos of ruined ginnels for the gimcracks of auxiliary duty to service, is the glorification of the sultry intimations of legions of remonstrance in guarded decorum about sunken atrocities lapsed in memorial to the incumbent brunt of sockdolagers of justice returning revenants from the bridewell of historical internment. The symphily of orchestras to cineaste symposiasts of surquedry in impudence beyond the brays of betrayal is the aborning mythos of regimented perceptions of a world that when magnified by minutiae appears starkly contrast to the gapped gubbertushed reality of the average patron of the arts to such an extreme gulf of receptive understanding that the qualia are dovetailed only in the swink of careful kisswonks to certify certitude itself when all the fragments coalesce into subjoined harmony to the substructures of inherent conscientiousness. The miracles at work that are vesicles and vessels for the swage of imprint above the loyalty of the imprinted tribunes of the fluminous is how hidden protrusions can emerge so victorious over popularized glazes on the pastures of a farmed culture itching for timmynoggies of innovation but only finding the etched remarks of pristine imagos of heroism dwindling in motivation to surpass the imaginative leaps accustomed to a newfangled laziness that bedazzles the guzzle of crowds but not the discrimination of the crowded morass of incompletion found in mosaics missing enigmatic philters of intoxicated love for the profound. So to be intermediary as a custodian for artistry we must cozen the wheedled imaginations not of the relic but the archaeologist that discovered the embedded prisms of attentive scrutiny for glinting sunshine inherent in troves of surpassed excellence beyond parochial sympatric blandishment of donnism rather than a resselenque that floats above demeanor to usher the cosseted age of treasure above the glib brocards and florews of past success.

      Immanent to the provisions of God as decreed from a syncretic reconnaissance of the pitiable gulfs that separate boundless divine love from the clavigerous potential for scrappy sympatric affiliation to **** through the barnstorms of internal comestions of conflated priorities we are ourselves prismatic in the indulgence of a tasty life sprinkled with zest rather than tempered with the vengeance of retorted animosity that we knead the pottery of ironclad resistance to a metallic conduit of pruned fulminations of unguided intuition so that the natural accord supersedes the goad of materialism for the sustenance of antiquity beyond its heyday for vital gains against the tauricide of panic and frenzy. The linchpin of all realistic attempts at the sympatric symphily of civilization is a guided remorse through the torment of affliction that sizzles without anteric barbs as it measures through engrenage how to pilot the vehicles of prosperity through the minefields of contingency that invisibly bequeath new hurdles and inestimable obstacles that collude surreptitiously to fulminate measured controversy against the backbites of restrained equipoise created by polities of the macadamized fabric of a welded smithy of a universe that with ubiquity proclaims above the senseless the harvest of conjugal repartee in sensible pride against militant bastions of incidental prejudice for a careen against the flyndresques of danger and the flyndrigs of glaikery alike for a humane spurt of enlightenment to tower peerlessly in supervision of entelechy created by esemplastic unity in apolaustic purpose. We cannot be puritans engaged in a pilgrimage to a palimpsest of priggishness because the daring elements of adventurism are necessary ingredients to catalyze the supply-chain of the innate gluttony of ego-seeking endless balance with a natural sustained biognosy that prizes biocentric harmony above bibliognost scepsis so that the enthused can flock with liberty divorced from libertinism. The ultimatum is a war between hedonism wed with donnism against eumoirety and self-restraint and this battle will be waged on the indolence of a future of cordslave tethers to interrogation of privy conceptualism hamshackled by the gradgrinds into the neat nexility of precise conformity that blacklists the samizdat because the genizah profoundly twists the already jumbled jengadangle and provides a junediggle of procession and ceremony rather than pomp without substantial grit embedded in the showmanship of a reality in need of a fourth-wall.

        It is ironic how we bewrayed our stewardship of the planet as a plenipotentiary sentience waged against the vesicles of instinct but more fundamental to this tattered but pregnant psalm is that the stronghold of our future is the tenacity of filial duty to enthrone the household with husbandry and restraint as an emolument to divine justice that sparkles opalescent in its own redacted notions of gravity imperfect in the taradiddles of science but refined by the eclat of the combustible syncopation of a reiterative trope of realism combined with surrealist caprice to henpeck affectionate violation above inviolable screeds of blood sport rather than conjugal affections afforded to the brood and the feast of the flocks that rein supreme over all things but exert inclement justice over the cattle and chattel of civilization itself. The minkumpf against the sacrilege of a prioritized kosher is to abhor the suffering rather than embrace the penitence of perceived but specious sacrifice which is an ornery thorn on the stained conscience of the yobbery of both the apikoros and the obedient because to attenuate all suffering even of instinctual beings we anneal our hearts to a glorified compassion that supersedes the relegated relics of pushful genuflection by succedaneum of sacrifice waged against the docile whangams of otiose theodicy. The filibusters against the regnant complexity of regalia that is a sprauncy poivrade with terpsichorean flairs to transmute the intimations of hibernated perfidy into finicky transmissions for the riometers that accord orbific merit in a lackluster time enchant the rollicking audience of this auditorium of the prevenance of the conquered universe bracing for the camorra of the insipid entreaty of defalcated casuistry—the prominent exchequer in hoodwinked political agitprop that forges ironclad allegiances to flimsy facades of the verisimilitude of dignity with recalcitrant but incondite bruits of venom militant against secular apostasy—that the fitful arrivistes that swim in dire dearth will be welcomed into the reconciliation of all time with a tempered lurid glint of revelation bounded by sunken albatross of hype unbounded with a peace insurmountable in prestige rewarded only with the highest reservations.


    On 3-1-2020 when I penned my philosophy—even at a slowpoke margin of crafty precision above rapid empirical faucets of folly—I was entirely selfsame with the autotelic engravings of the smoldering aboriginal talents within that many can swing through by tenacity for enormous plaudit but a flagrant majority will apprehend with flippant scollardical tenets of rebuke and remain honest in their appraisal only in meek resignation of parvanimity.
Consider the postulates of rarefaction whittled into a vehement zeal against the prostitution of our species to the anteric cycles of residual molds of dingy spectacle mired by the tyrannical towers of supercilious squirms of revamped novelty rather than enhanced by the freebooters of dirigisme that borrow from time the behest of philandered flairs divorced from the cadges of secular instinct and enthroned by the qualms of engineered virtuosity that is stark, barren but peerless in its outstretched clamor for luxuriant sprees against the silentium of grandeval asylum incurred by the flippant filigrees of recalcitrant modernism endangered by the irredentism of the future upon the whimsy of the present-minded momentary glare of rapture.  This impending architecture of nimble but subservient endeavor is a pinprick rejoinder against the wernaggles of prepossessed fountains of configured animosity against the stapled heed of a modality of trayned invictive invectives against the plodding course of fustilugianation that swerves in apathy of autopilot junediggle to emanate the surrender of epigone to the raktendure of the synaesthesis of the attuned perception of all superimposed minutiae delegated by calculated design into a synclastic focus on veiled caprice that is vaulted above the choppy and sketchy verdure of remiss perception to stellar continuities rather than mundane knickpoints of stodged blurs that magnify syncretic qualia into baseline congruity rather than staid torpefied resignation of the visage of thunder without the pangs of the widely vituperated lightning that bequeaths all certain notions but flouts the tortious saboteurs of the prim trucage of brittle fundamentalism.

     As the flawed paragon of a picaresque youth punctuated by vibrant plumage of self-wrought tropophilous usucaption of remote groomed frontiers of desolate luxury but buoyant morale into the ballasts of a nimble usufruct that hikkles yet still against still-framed thilloire--fatuous in endearment only to the polity of the waterdrip of craven but gravid disingenuous flickers of lambent cloaks of perfidy—that earned its birthright by meditative fruition rather than prodigal tallespin of indolent frapplanks of a vicarious personage rather than an autotelic haecceity showcases the folly of heterodyne inclinations meeting an impasse of accidental dislodgement. The interregnum between the spurts and sprees of luxuriance is a staid pause between continuities of afforded parlance becoming stapled demographic solidarity affixed to a strident gallop of effortful pushes against the tenacity of the slumberous wicked hibernation of vetust magpiety without hieratical internment because youthful industry beats hackneyed bludgeons of wiseacres of a stilted manufacture of steamy nostalgia for lickerish moments that dignify but undermine moral virtues but splash anointed and sometimes disjointed favor upon the congeners to a rabid escapade of a heedless love frowning on the girdles of the prim balderdash of heralded jolts dim on levity and puffed with elusive contextualized control of libidinous serrated defilement because the crotaline **** outmantles the sweedled limber of exploitable folly. The cosseted reality of wheedled gourmands of continuous perception rather than the Gaussian blur of the protean invention of stitches in time that obscure rather than magnify the supernal levity inherent to most artistry is a linchpin of lenient gravitas that levies the lavaderos of ripe perception into annealment.
Excuse the bravado of the gait of winnowed forks in a bronteum for heralds of megaloscopy fastened to the macroscian reality of indelible filigrees of countermanded controversy becoming its best behest in the sempiternal flowering of burgeoned demonstration rather than illustrious overhang of drab slabs of manufacture rather than organism that should be interposed between the constellated concepts of both apperception and the aggrieved counselors to obtuse obsessions that are an improper tutelary for a designated reprisal of the once profane now immediately gratified by ramshackle tenets of a guarded sublimation of the tenets of post-modernism into a sustained force of the internalized tabernacle of haecceity shepherded into exuberance by the manumission of spirit from the ******* of purblind scalds of defamation that incurs the penalty of flippant privation. The refuge the Lord provides is not contingent upon the vagaries of deliberation nor the calculus of oversight but the remontant amaranthine glower of a listed deed becoming an eternal reminder that a dismantled and disjointed world fathoming only remorse rather than the trudge of gentility against the headwinds of brunt asperity will always flout the successor rather than atone for the failure of the imponent condition that constellates around rudimentary drivel grubbing the momentary out of avarice for allotted merchandise rather than glommed magnets to amoeba sentiments for the kisswonk of ulterior motive beyond dungeons of desperation that lurk ghoulishly with spectral frights at the disfigurement of morale created by errors askew rather than a contagion of righteous valor.

   Ask the heedful servant if the captaincy of reneged commitment owes homage to dutiful instruction or whether it is a balking corpse of necrosis accorded to the omphalism of brutish carnal repose in times of sedentary silt siphoned in spelunked rijuice for preordination is a predominant specter for a world scared scurrilous and skittish in a diatribe against the very notion of tribal screeds embedded in the sedimentary heft of traditionalism above the pother of vacillation commended to the apikoros but counterfeit fiat system of a ruddy governance without a supreme magistrate. Now lets venture into the territory of visagists as we envision the swanky subversion of impoverished and nebbich visions of oligochrome that fixates on belabored but dead notions of rigid propriety and levitate above those concerns with a querulous transcendence that never wernaggles about the profaned irrelevance of burlesque tropes of sidereal friction but instead memorializes the thermolysis of permeable endeavor above staid countenances of imposture that lurk in the shadowy penumbra of the connivance of persona above the archetype of the tutelary guardian spirit that through windlass and sometimes deliberation affixes nobility to even the pedestrian in order to assize its proper proportions to granular ironies expounded into megalography transformative by the very rivets of its supersensible existence and cohabitation with histrinkage among human taboos.

   The handiwork of a permeable race prone to exacerbated proclamations of prerogatives bulldozed by the rapid percolation of insoluble quandaries to the gripes of the feast of foofaraw sometimes shelters our otherwise regnant concern about the plenipotentiary God that observes all latent affairs without the paramours that conflate vivid carnality with appeased luxury and superimposes a crafty system of seismic shifts in rantipole dances with numinous flux rather than dissipated militant suppression of the fracklings of dissolute pollution which swirk in their dastardly desperado endeavors to corral the entire monoliths that guard each province into a winnowed rumble of rubble by tarnish of Tyre rather than by the upstart rejoinders of Canaan. Every creature which has the capacity to perceive language is afforded benedictions by the overhailing force of the hypaethral heights of superlative ingenuity founded in the bolted speculation of the endearment of all to tropological seesaws embattled against the hearsay of nyejays that contaminates the telmatology of the ecosystem of revivalism rather than buries the leaden debts of the disjointed revenants of past prominence into recycled irrelevance for posterity rather than for anything but a machination of a clockwork apple rigged for a rotten worm to swindle the sweet delicate tempests of unforeseen disaster to perjuries against financial solidarity.

The spinsters of sardonic drollery underscore the imminence of an incondite cutthroat collapse blackguarded by the hucksters of incontinence grubbing every fetched noisome notion and congealing a bonnyclabber of desiccated mildew that proves vestigial when the victors of time earn their joyous serenade to the pinnacle of the totem of jaundice slits in wavy endeavors for the participles of sejungible syntax of the ephorized furor to outlast the draksteng of droned dereliction manned by half-baked spies of ulterior recitals for imprinted vicissitude in supremacy in synquest for frizzlounges rather than the pedestrian circulatory system of careworn polity. We vaporize the petty hatred of sympatric regelation that neuters the virulence of motivated impediments to the draconian surge of asperity that sinks temporal haplessness as a regaled blasphemy that crowns only the ringed betrothal to spumid serrated halts in slick superstition that is a buggery to the idea of insectivores devouring the erratic chantage of germane germs that pauperize rather than even blind the deafened to be a crutch to vehicular homicide. Melismatic sennet is a dirigible of immense herculean sinew without the traces of vestibulary retches of kisswonked grisly tepid intimidations of eccedentesiasts by the radioglare of wizened corrugations in thanatism that exhort the avatars of narquiddity over the natural departure of revenant souls back to their temporary hostility to crass lifeless decarnate immediacy that slinks with foibles magnified by vertiginous heights of scollardical reputes rigged by the rijuice of the plackiques of meaningless spoils for swashbuckler bonanza borrowed from serrated vengeance exacted in prominence to provide false avenues of extenuation to malefaction that is confidant to the panopticon of exemplary dimples meager in the largesse of the composite realism of a sizable imprint on megalography that outlasts impertinent excuses for dangerous trout swimming against the mobilized selachostomous frizz of sharks gathering to avenge disclosure with insolence and gravid atrocity of incisive surgical evisceration of attempted depositions that falter by innumerable facets of countenance that belie ultimate realism and the perdurable construction of a sturdy hive of bibliognost revelry.

     Even with the blaring sennet of majesty inundating my piecemeal perception with the marstions of flarium that is an efficacy in a flaccid world of otiose pretenses limpid only in folly but contraplex in ironic skewbald skerries of grubbed destination that is the terminus of karezza despite the maledictions of vehement guarded betrayals that conjure up lurid noisome virility against the gamines and gallywows that populate interstellar fictions of virtu rather than mundane pragmatica that astound with the resselenque of contaminated skeumorphs of latent fracture belonging to a skeletonized ossified reification of farce above historicity in seemly seamless countenance with overwrought princely stature deserving integrity to ripples through sparkling opalescence. The vapid insularity of the self-contained mythos of appeased groundlings is based on the rhizic and rhizogenic fracklings destitute in predicative flares to swelter above stratospheres of the illimitable into the dwelling of the highest serenity inherent to the pacification of truth to neglect its egregious errors of mistetches of a ripened pachyderm of bravery in times of austerity and now a reclaimed notion of sempiternal charades swimming above the punitive draksteng of dranger that is enlarged by acclimated attempts at foiled raltention hikkling against its own superior forces of galvanized preterition to elide over screwball insanity of derangement in this virtual paradise of inhabited souls belonging to former times congregating on the pasture of the evanescence of now for all eternity having the optative condition of incarnation above the ferules of the stagnant brevity of oversight in heavenly realms by postulate but not confirmed by regal logic.

     The troponder of the flickered lambent niceties of polity is a countenance that piggybacks on simpered jostles of negligent engrenage to appease sworn enmities among beatific havens for certitude swarmed by the fisticuffs of darbied bridewells of desiccated drainage traversing the distant disdain for the gravel of cemented slits of stilted pragmatica that is a gavel of atrocious estoppel mediated by heroic heresiarchs against pitiable betrayal for forceful remedies in acclimated servitude to the groans and groaks of a life of remorse and dearth rather than the glut of luxuriance in forbearance to its own intorted mirrored ironies that etch infinity with every scrawled rejoinder to austere ploys of checkered rumbles of threat and exigency posed by the clairvoyant hypocrites who benefit greatly by the design of the omphalism above the frays and brays of corporate dogmatism slowly outmoded by vibrant plumages of heteronormative originality beyond petty chantage. A hesitation overcomes the bluster of bravado as the restive earnest concerns of tribulation beset the minauderies of divine affection to reaffirm the teachings of the Gospel so that future generations genuflect beneath the altar of the ultimate stroke of sociogenesis and the blood ransom of suffering that promoted the human latitude and liberty against incarcerated throngs of virtue over caesaraproprism accorded to genuflection beneath denarii rather than absolution by tether to the eternal vine of sensation of the supersensible entelechy of all valiant insurrections against defective polities and renewed policies.

     We thus seek a transdimensional bridge between the morphean virtu of rudimentary alchemy of propitiation divulged by leverage and the teeming rambunctiousness of fiduciary tribes to the ultimate duty of man to consummate the future of eternity even in slowpoke mannerisms that sidle through rigors of entelechy and assize the masterwork of tutelage above the circumforaneous entrenchment of glut above the mastery of the subtle subaudition that beleaguers an adept conflagration of harnessed human ignorance staid in the incarceration of exotic virtues of freewheeling sapience never vulnerary to hospitable concerns that entrenches the verisimilitude of a refracted justice to reign over the stultification of a primitivism inherent to man and not man alone.

whispered from a far
fairwell, gentle knight

quedar en silencio

que le traera
si a ella no desea

pianga, pianga

le fleuve ne s'arrête pas

the willow set fire
on itself

three feathers blown

via
via

va via

shattered mirror
eres ella

the spell of the tower

trois plumes
il suo cuore

a willow
drowning

dans le tourbillon

whispered from a far
fairwell, gentle knight

it was but
the waves

haleter de papillons

delusion

whispered from a far
fairwell, gentle knight

she is
nowhere

erronée
ma credente

endless road to
a dock in a bay

What is the space between,
enclosing us in one
united person, yet
dividing each alone.

Frail bridges cross from eye
to eye, from flesh to flesh,
from word to word: the net
is gapped at every mesh,

and this each human knows:
however close our touch
or intimate our speech,
silences, spaces reach
most deep, and will not close.

In a world full of ugly people,
A city made of hideous faces,
A phone call means everything.
It means a voice, free from
Its crooked nose, its wrinkled skin,
And its gapped, stained, crooked teeth.
It means a connection.
With another, with yourself,
And with the ability to disconnect
At the push of a button.
I take out my scratched, chipped cellphone
With its cracked face,
And call Helen.
Her voice swims through the mud
Inside my skull when she answers,
Stirring and churning
Until I'm weak and dizzy.
"How 'bout you just come
On over now, Big Fella?"
And I do.
I turn off the squawking television,
Don a pair of food-stained pants,
Drag a comb through my
Overgrown hair,
And descend the stairs to my
Waiting Oldsmobile.
The turn of the key in the ignition
Only produces a hollow click,
One click two click three click six,
Then a partial start,
But the beast fails to come alive.
I get out to replace
The fried starter fuse,
Then do this dance four more times
Before the old ***** clears her throat
And starts to idle.
It's a short ride,
Pawtucket is small,
And my only companion
On these post-midnight streets
Is the white noise
Issuing from the broken radio.
I pass the house I grew out of,
The crumbling schools
That taught me the value
Of impartial numbness,
The cemetery my father used to visit
To perpetrate the lie
He lives;
The role of a child
And the permanence
Of parents.
I pass abandoned factories
And abandoned hope
And abandoned pets
And abandoned storefronts.
In a world of full of past relics,
In a city full of ghosts,
A crumbling façade means everything.
It means bricks freed from their mortar,
Separated from their history,
Left to be picked up and thrown through plate glass windows.
Buildings are never empty,
Just quiet.
I pass the CVS at Newport and Armistice,
With its twenty four hour pharmacy,  
Dispensing the one a.m. hydrocodone,
The one thirty a.m. dextroamphetamine,
The two a.m. oxycodone,
The two thirty a.m. alprazolam,
The three a.m. dextromethorphan,
The three thirty a.m. methylphenidate,
The four a.m. eszopiclone,
The four thirty a.m. benzodiazeprine,
The five a.m. phenylpropanolamine.
I drive past the clinic in the old senior center
With its six a.m. methadone ready to go
In pre measured cups.
Buildings can be quiet, but not empty.
Helen lives on the third floor of a three story house
Built sometime in the forties,
Forgotten sometime in the eighties.
The two bottom floors are vacant,
The windows are boarded,
The driveway is choked with weeds,
And two lounging cats don’t flinch
When I walk by them
On my way to the door in the rear of the building.
The door is always unlocked,
So I let myself in
And begin the rickety climb to the top.
The higher I go,
The louder Amy Winehouse’s voice gets.
“What kind of fuckery is this?”
Seems an adequate question.
There are ****** handprints on the railings,
The walls,
Drops polka dot the stairs.
I don’t bother knocking,
I never do.
She’s seated in a La-Z-Boy in the kitchen
Facing the door,
In a cloud of cigarette smoke.
In place of exchanged pleasantries
I say I need to use the bathroom
And she nods,
Eyes locked on mine.
I take a look at my sallow image
In the mirror,
With specks of toothpaste and hairspray
Pocking my face like acne.
The toilet bowl is still streaked
With the last man’s ****.
I ****, wash my hands,
And take another look at myself.
Helen is no longer in the chair,
But I know where to find her.
She’s sprawled on the bed,
With a new cigarette in her mouth,
The toys spread out on one side,
The tools on the other.
I tell her I’ll forgive her for stabbing me the other night
If I can get a freebee now.
She shakes her head once,
Exhales a cloud,
“Not gonna happen, Champ,”
And I take what I can get.

I’d fling the sun far into your cut corner
and shove moonlight broadly onto your toenails
you would want for so little
as the oceans carry you to shores of your water borne desire

wicked is the world stream when high hopes pegged precarious
onto chalky lines that shift like changing clouds
and lend its kind illusory touch under the lee

end dashed like outcast mirrors whose use
is rod cracked like inside the core of acrid earth
where awaits hot lava in secret fissures to melt all ropes
to bridge so narrow a wing's gapped fluke

jerking maestroms circle overhead
inducing desultory plunge
finger pointing, egg-beating, giddy whirly whirl

a day will come as yet unknown
when soul rags are panel worked and hylic sheathed
when latticed treats, as American as apple pie
will fill that tabled sky decked with cirrus tablecloth

averted seeker squint feels that cat-eyed wonder
flattened insect on a troubled screen with translucent beauty wings
lets in a dry smile ***** of real life dust in heretical relief

rupture
        ventilation
bolt that flippin' door – shut out the ****** world – make fast the curtain sides
broach the unslotted gap you know is yours and proclaim it wide: open sesame!
gouge your way into me - till I’m fully plugged with light
caulk me with your fingers till my spine near cracks
spike my heart with currents from the milk rush of you
pierce my thigh strips and whip the whetted words out me
tap into the slinky slices of my pervious skylit want
there will be no occlusion as arches meet under shuddered pleats

no, I have precious little time or heart to draw cute sunshine panels onto your retracted sleeve
in that stead, I can really be just plain me
who’d  eagerly wrench pale-blue patches from the sky cloth
and steal in zest moonbeams from lovers’ eyes
and heartily fling the sun your way and rob its life-giving warmth
and gladly rip up torn foliage from its homes
along with pert petals from fickle floral parties

if only these were things you’d want
yet, well I know whatever be the pains
there waits little gain
feral feline will trouble little more
heart swing derision flies poor as sad plighted answer rings on

*******.
All of your
                   b r o k e n
                                   promises,
And stupid lies.

I sat there many nights, calling
And wondering where you were.
I hoped that you were with your friends.
But, God, I knew you were with her.

You smelt like her when you sat by me
And the floors creaked Cheater, Cheater
I thought that I would get over it,
But then I was able to see her.

Greasy face, and stringy hair,
Oh my, is that the best you could do?
But those yellow gapped teeth come back to me,
I guess she deserves you.

So you left and went to her
And I thought it was because of me.
Is it wrong that I can't stop laughing?
You're betrayal has given me glee.

She ****** another in his bed,
While you waited around for her.
So I guess the sides have been turned.
Tell me, Darling, does it hurt?

So, Sweetheart, with the fire red hair,
Whose name makes my stomach churn,
Tell me, did you ever think that
A ginger boy could burn?

Of course
when your southern tipped - tongue
drips out the words
"I want to move up north"
everyone whose roots
reach deep below the belt
of the Mason Dixon
will ****** your face
in their gaze
and warn you bout
that Northern Disregard.

But don't listen to their tales
of discarded homeless
people plastered cross pavement.
Tell them bout those
who find home amongst
the clutter of 125th
with warm eyes
that search the cold
looking for laugh lines
and loose change.

Tell them
how they maintain
an open hand
good for grasping
and an open mouth
good for un-gourging
their gapped - toothed grins
of wisdom.

You tell them
that these people
with the wrinkles
of a wise man
may not have much
but they share
what they got.

You tell them
that no matter
where we're from
we've all got a little
Southern Hospitality
stained in our smiles.

Tell them
that you'll be fine
and pray you're right.

a decapitated dog put on too many sticks to reach out and bite a child who only wanted to play with a soft touch and gapped holed grin.
the lights go out when you can´t know when,  say yes to hold lights for when ´when´ happens ¨you can trip and fall¨.
glasses melted with fire to become bigger for a bigger head are still to dark to wear in shadow.
tilted camera you stare with a corked head curious to what goes on behind me, won´t you look my way instead.
dragonfly warrior poorly protecting his flourescent queen from the onslaught of molecules in a world filled with air, with air, with air, air, air.
the volume of speakers are controlled by tiny gods moving their tiny fingers, just a littly bit louder my dear.
can you remember when landline telephones were used, I remember circle dials and zero always took the longest, when did phone get rid of tele?
white flowers and white hanging sheets with yellow sun bolts raining on a clear sky shout with thunder from a noisless wind, I wear earphones tonight.
trees dance better then me, plants taste better then me, pianos sound better then me, me is better then me, we´re equals.
fat cat dreams of being skinny, he wears eye liner on weekdays and thongs on the weekends.
sometimes yoga makes me feel like a woman who feels **** then yoga makes me think what that thought means?
rocks are hot when heated.

Another drunk poem between headphones, static & blank screens
surround me
Awoke in the morning with a gamblers smile, like seagulls flocking,
resting, gliding
Broken, crushed, words like quiet jokes until that last whisper under
***** sheets in a cheap motel
Yet we sip our poison and smoke our cancer, brothers and friends crammed
into closeness
Smiles spent on the eyes of those to lovely to smile back, yet their
hearts were warmed
By gapped tooth grins and young men with dirt under
bitten fingernails
Last night the headlights behind me made silver halos
in the mist
As I walked down gravel roads with mud stuck everywhere, my
constant companion
Some days I forget I’m human, that I exist, sitting in the passenger seat,
watching the world run by
Two kids with backpacks and a stray cat, asked them where they were heading,
“Hitchhiking to nowhere..”
Nowhere sounds about right right now, looking at the
state of things
A place of fragrant trees and uncut grasses, stones unturned and
clear running streams
The broken limestone memories of my childhood call
to me
Not much left of that anymore, just fragments like a
smashed tooth
Can’t even think some days, easier not to I think, easier to let
it all pass by
I saw a darkness today, and I closed my eyes to try for
light
Standing under rusty bridges, flicking dead embers
away
Between blue lines on the page I spill thoughts like
spoilt milk
Scribbles and scratches, wasted and unwanted, lost between
memories
Memories I claim, not sure if they’re even mine
anymore
Twenty two years old with a death wish by thirty
Dots and lines, a splash of smiles and laughter, stains
in the carpet
And we sit here like corpses, the two of us, cigarette butts between
twitching fingers
Stilled by the last exhale, the moment between
inaction and locomotion
Our still waters stirred, clear blue skies filled with rain clouds, still
blue above them
Your room, surrounded by rooms full of people, washing dishes or
watching their dreams die on T.V. screens
None of that matters to me, just your breath and hearing your voice for a second
before sleep takes over
I left a note in that book you told me you’d read, guess you
never got around to it

I saw this War Veteran on his porch yelling at this Hipster Kid who was tethered to his fence across the generational gapped front lawn, yelling back at him. And I mean, they got into it.
The kid wasn't doing anything really, just taking alternate swigs of foamy PBR and flat Red Bull and chucking the cans into the vet's unkempt garden, retorting Dylan lyrics and sentiments of Kerouac like the post-modern beatnik he was.
I couldn't make out what the Old Vet was saying. His voice was missing from probably smoking too many Benson & Hedges Black down in the trenches. I know he must have been saying something uncalled for, though, to get this Kid so riled up like that.
I'm not sure what they were arguing about since I awoke right in the middle of this altercation, hanging upside down on a bench in the park across the street. I suppose I'll just wait until the Vet goes back inside so I can go over and release the Kid and ask him what that was all about.

Walking in.
In hand, a pink/brown suitcase.
Wearing an orca suit.
Doesn't matter why.
Dark auditorium.
Millions of thumb faces.
Smudged away by the painter.
Stumbling up and down the seats.
Sitting in one.
Getting Up
Moving to another.
All of the sudden in the front row.
Watching the spectacle.
At hand & on stage.
Too bright to actually see.
Just a white sun spot.
Then everyone is waiting.
Women are called on stage.
They are beautiful.
One by one they step up.
The wood floor is worn & polished.
And then they say my name.
And I stand up.
I'm in a tight red dress.
I tip toe to the stage.
All the thumb faces are silent.
Relaxed & unfocused.
I stand there, feeling the end of a joke.
And they clap and we smile.
I'm in between Ellen and Madonna.
Suddenly, every one is gone.
And we leave the stage.
Behind the scene.
Everything is concrete.
Obsolete.
Madonna looks at me.
And I feel myself swallow any hope,
Of an ego.
Eradicated, I know she thinks I'm nothing.
I run to the small bathroom mirror.
My two front teeth are gapped.
Bent inward.
Tears spills out from my eyes and down my face.
I run into the alley and look around.
I remember I left my suitcase where I was sitting.
Back at my seat, everyone is gone.
My suitcase is open and empty.
All my clothes are mixed up with things on the floor.
I slowly gather them.
As the the janitor man applies lipstick,
The movie star mirror looking back.
I walk to the front.
Heels clicking.
A man with long black hair is waiting.
'Why didn't you get my suitcase?'
'I don't know.'

I was a little girl yesterday morning,
With a flash of red hair and a gap-toothed grin
Laughing and playing on the swing at my favorite park.
I was a confused pre-teen that afternoon,
Scraping her knees on jagged insults
Holding in tears for secret bathroom visits
Where she would push her fingers
Into her throat and
Pray on her knees that her lunch would
Reappear like a magic trick.
I was a scared teenager by evening,
Kissing girls and running away from
The demons in my head with voices
That sounded like my mother’s.
By midnight I was on the floor shaking,
Back to twenty, back to who I am now
Wishing those past me’s would understand that I needed
Something more.
Yet this morning I sat up in my bed and greeted the sun with a
Flash of red hair and a close-gapped grin
And I am here now,
Here remembering, being present and
Knowing who I was
Ten years ago twelve years ago fifteen years ago five minutes ago
Is exactly who I needed to be,
Doing exactly what I needed to do.
Scraping my knees and elbows
And pushing my finger down my throat
And feeling ugly all the time,
That’s not what I needed but it’s
Who I was Who I couldn’t stop being because I
Didn’t know how. In my mind,
I am not
That little girl, that preteen, that teenager I am me.
I am
Bumping and bruising and
Breaking, sometimes, along the way but this
Is where I stand.
And those past selves stand
Hand-in-hand somewhere along
The equator of my brain
Like paper dolls unfolded
Through my history.

Life has the tendency to feel like a prozac commercial,
the reality that everything either pops or goes up in the air.
I see my little sister's gapped smile, in the soapy reflection-
her joy should be infectious, but it spreads guilt like a plague
to my already tortured mind.
I feel so guilty,
for wanting to take my life.

in the grand scheme of things, he’s the trees and I’m the river and the stones are always, always covered in blood

2. he keeps looking at me over his shoulder and I don’t know if it’s because he knows I’m lying or if he’s checking to see that I’m still alive

3. he told me I was a god, some free and ruthless and holy thing and I told him he was the sun and we’re both waiting on the test results to see who won

4. he smiles like an animal, too much teeth, gapped and bleeding, too much dirt stuck to his gums, lips sticky and eyes burning holes into me

5. I never thought I’d be afraid of the way the light hits the earth, quietly and all at once, but I am and it feels like I should be on my knees and praying to something I know doesn’t exist for me

6. in the grand scheme of things, neither of us is a bird or fragile or something precious to hold onto, and both of us know this, which makes it worse

7. he isn’t some winged holy thing

8. he hung the stars and told me how lovely I was in the lighting

9. he put a gun in his mouth until I could taste the sting of it, metal coating my insides, until I was the one bleeding iron bullets

10. he handed me his plastinated heart and told me to swallow it whole so I did

11. he said a lot of things and I mostly don’t remember them because I was too busy knitting us together at the seams of our broken bones, two skeletons in the same grave, some kind of poetic fate

12. or, that’s how I’ll say it happened

I wouldn't mind kissing your chapped lips
or touching elbows late at night.

We could spin the world away
and sing about the lipless.

I'd vaccum my room to get rid of the smell
and then we could lay there until our thoughts settle,
or I could make you tea, promising not to spit in the cup.
I don't know if you like sugar or not,
but I do, so I'll put it in anyway.

I know you don't like apples,
oranges, babies, hairy legs,
stair cases, dark tunnels,
neon colors, highlighted hair,
leftovers, or gapped teeth.

I know you like milk,
dark hair, movies (almost any),
games, poetry, dancing,
singing, my hands (touching yours),
and eye contact.

I only have 6 dollars,
3 pills,  4 cigarettes,
5 fingers (on each hand),
2 eyes, and 1 interest.

Opening seen,
bright lips curved, precisely,
see the smile fitted over teeth naturally gapped,
doubtless an adaptation acceptable,
nothing that sticks out as odd,
and ugly,
but the smiler wonders, is this me?
Mirror, mirror, tell me true…

Do you see who I was, or who I wish I were?

Were, says the wolf lurking in the shade.
The mirror says you see who I wish I were,
if I were you.

See, see me, says the mirror from this side,
follow your selves, one after another,
down the hall of all in all.

Always falling forward,
don't forget, to put your best foot forward.
There is a place to put your foot,
your guide reminds you, see,
that you do,
prevent the disease - sneeze please.

- I once put my foot in my mouth
- I kicked myself in the head
- It has made all the difference.

--------------

Quick, quicken the pace, my heart
is racing an imaginary Jehu, so fat I laugh
that such imagines slaying me.

Big wins, ring out around the casino,
as the atomic kid walks by,
I was the kid,
sold on condition of survival,
don't be like Jerry, be like Dean,
live drunk,
enter the maze, yeah, this is that story,
another twice told tale, you remember
as a child
thinking, this must make sense sometime.

- 1963, Mrs.Burnett, suggested Hersey,
- both, The Child Buyer and Hiroshima.

I'm sure
it does, per
haps not in your time, I'm saying some time,
future from now,
as we agree, in truth alone, all things occur
as may occur whither only truth remains.

The arena of truth.
Let me entertain you. Do wheels spin
in your mind on a window in time?
Can you stop the game and claim I won?

Would you leap for joy, and kiss me,
for winning,
if I died happy and right,
right now?

Ah, I owe, so I may not go, though may is
my word to use at will, I am that old
and thus free of heresy, by definition.

May your path cross mine in joyous meditation,
fat dancing Buda  

Spelchek has joined the guide union,
it is her pronoun, but for me, to me
she is just like a wombed man

barefoot, soft walk on soft sand
wombed man, belly-wise
gestation, see soon seed
blooms, after drought super blooms
wide world blossoms rise in sacred
meaning made plain,

living waters, from your own cistern.
Let them be only thine own,
and not another's with thee,

did you ever have the opportune
instant one mind must have to be
remade in a flash,
past
a mirror where the hero yo, hom'
m'gotta defeatist -- it's me,
standin'
up to my neck in the needy prayers.
Gnoshit.

Here, take my hand, in my reality,
we step lightly,
thus the barefoot pregnant guise
Spelchek uses as her seductress
persona,

she whispers, rebbi, come and see.
- she has a country girl grin
- Dance in Buda
Buda
Texas, ah

Here we be, once more,
exactly where you never were
before, but think of it
a duet, an artificial interlude in drama
developing, as the tension,
is insistent, this is that
meaning full connection
Christmas represents.

Right… you lost me.
She winks, says wanna bet?

i’ll be your girl for the night. i like throwing myself into the careless, wandering hands of degenerates every once in a while. you’re throwing up in your hat in the back of a gypsy cab. the driver keeps stopping every 30 feet. he’s sweet about it, passing you napkins. i’m trying hard not to laugh but it’s sneaking out through the gapped fingers over my mouth. it’s 4:30 and we’ve been both been drinking so much and know nothing of each other but we’re having fun and i can’t feel my feet or my brain or really anything. 30 something year old men leaning towards me behind pool tables while you’re in the bathroom. “can i kiss you?”  i don’t really know how to respond so i laugh out of nervousness and shrug and kinda pace around the table. “is that your man?” he says. the pool stick is so sticky, covered in beer and weird hand oils and god knows whatever else. i lean over the green felt, pretend to comprehend angles and geometry and try to elongate my body as best i can. girls and pool tables are all very ****** and what not.

i can’t stop laughing in the back of that cab and you can’t stop saying sorry

inspired by Gertrude Stein*


Wood turns hard and shows its spaces. This is less convincing. If it spoke more no one would listen. It is solid and we don’t fall through. It reminds there is no remembering.

The pieces don’t touch, just spaces and they are put together. This is what is done without thinking and we still remember. If something is seen and nothing more than that, it should seem normal and grey.

A flag is innocent and spreads. Its colors don’t move and are divided and smoke pulls off more. If it is done where the whole is partial, leave the tab.  

The grey, the color grey, needs nothing more and never asks of anything.

Overalls can be hard, where wool socks are underrated and tired. It stays this way.

How can something so gapped hold calmly? Not because there was a touching, but because of something less. The blanket is blue and grey and holds if nothing more than that.

If hands are obvious, if hands are obvious and touching and hard, still no one listens. If hands are obvious and so is wood, there is nothing more.

Blue is guaranteed. Blue is guaranteed and so static, but ready.

I've been thirsting to burst your bubble since
I heard the low-down we may be over-
supplied with a green-backed bird called Money,
that trollop spread-wide by aliases

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
A buck or a pound, a buck or a pound

To a layman's ears unlearned in the fine-
tuned registers of glib-tongued financiers,
it may ring up as reason to cheer with
no tinkling of trouble, but if Money

Is all that makes the world go around
that clinking, clanking sound (they do say)

She sings, clangs a bit hollow when she clings
too heavy in alms of poorly wrung hands,
it's then well-heeled sit'n spins'll turn us about
to the golden-gapped beams of bankers mouths

For Money makes the world go around
The world go around, the world go around

And will till johns who hold little put less
stock in the **** pitches of slick-macking
daddy Street with his tricky fat pay backs
for the ounce of love he's flouncing to sell.

kiss me like the plague
hands of the sea
fingers an armada

kiss me with your barb wire lips
your lipstick's like a curse
crooked teeth and gapped
your smile like a hearse

kiss me with pink scars on your drop dead skin
(lead me to your slaughter)
thighs spun into spider silk
(I’ll be your sacrificial lamb)
1 pint water
3 drops mother’s milk

I am the cascade rain
of chivalrous knights
and bubbling veins.

The gap you mind
and overstep,
The mind that’s gapped
without repent.

Yet the lake reflects a smile
and bellows out broadly
in the broken streams of Nile
in the thoughts of this, a while.

We thread the wide gapped steel
With chemically dipped points
The fluoro carbons the distance
With near zero stretch
We braid our thoughts to tungsten
Then peg our weight immobile
Flip Flip Flip all day
Between the weeds and pads
Ever present presence fine tuned
To any tick upon the line
Snap ! Big one

Ode to "I knew him enough to know he's a cool guy."

When a child dies, everyone feels the ripple. But, I wonder if the dog in his Instagram profile picture will miss him. I wonder if he will run to whichever monotone voice calls him again.

How life rattles on, moonlight just barely bursting through cold winter mornings, sunlight touching grass like mother's hug, flowers blushing like first grade first date, favorite songs eaten and reeaten like taffy, how laughter bubbles and pops through gapped teeth, life moves before it sinks into the ground, under the calla lilies. Everything goes quiet under the red sun. It moves silently like ghost footprint. It is gone like bone chips in fingertips.  

Cherokee rose, tell me what you know. Will he be buried with a cast on his wrist just like I remember him?

remember  when we were young?

i was a baby mammoth
and you were a giant squid;
at first we ignored
each other in the classroom
but paid close attention
to our awkward body language
by the parking lot
next to the jungle gym

you were just one syllable
and i was an entire conversation
the subject somehow landed
on the preservation of science
and the fall of religion

your eyes lit up when i said
i was single because you
were in a long term relationship

said it was perfect timing
because you were ready
for marriage

i scoffed at the idea
with my legs trembling
inside the mouth
of quicksand

you pulled me up,
told me not to worry
and reminded me
that the ending
was all part of the plan

my ***** swam like
a swarm of insects
into your gaping
wound; spilling
over the sides
of the womb
causing your eyes
to roll back;
you moaned
you were
ready to come
soon

we came to,
as two;
our bodies intertwined
under the gapped-
tooth moonlight
smile

this was our crime,
we were young at the time

now here we are,
older than life permits
the body to exist;

i admit, i wouldn't
want to share this
moment with anyone
other than you,

my feline friend

I am her body
I am starving…
for attention

The last time she gave me a compliment
was the time the mirror was tilted towards the sun
and her rays wrote the words of beauty
very bright ..
so that her eyes could see

I am her body
a clingy companion unwanted
a friend-zoned partner.. with so much
life to give …
loved at once, and ignored many  
maybe if I jolt pain
she’d look at me..

I am her eyes
she doesn’t see
choses not to, her vision
distracted ..by …

the blue sky, attention like a goldfish
in a fishbowl, with all the blue,
but maybe this blue is new..

I am her ribs,
they show, that’s a good thing
but I am suffocating on the skin
that’s covered me too close
they layer me like sand dunes, sculpted by time
rubbing off by age, but
hey they show.. that’s a good thing..

I am her belly
breathing, many lovers loved…
hands laid on me, I felt the caress
and failed to warn her, it won’t last
I didn’t know.. I am sorry


I am her hands,
giving comfort, and warmth
fingerprints caved deeper, every birthday
she wrote, things her chords wouldn’t say
her hands guided… and (have been) deserted
loved and (have been) left
lifted and (have been) dropped
warmed and (have been) solo
gave and (have been) taken
warned and (have been) stabbed

I am her legs
gapped by less and less food
more and more steps
less .. more…
.. walks away…
counts calori……. steps

I am her mind..
a territory of landmines
placed by past experiences
sugarcoated with sprinkles
baked to perfection
the mastermind of the strategy
the lighthouse
for many .. but
not
her

The sun doesn’t startle away
the heft of last night’s image.
There was the street light and the twitching
eyelid, three teeth coated in yellow.
A bellowing that smothered
and the feeling that the old man did not know
of himself.

The contortion of skin: his face,
gapped. A voice lashes at the air.
There are no words. Arms stretch.
There are the hands. A mistake.
He shambles and swipes, finally
he pushes a fist into you, creating
the fall. Now his nails claw
at your chest. Your hand thrusts
up into his gray face, then you push
him off and stand. You throw
the old man down and pummel
his chest with your boots, marking
the ground with flesh, and then
you are gone.

And even though you left him strapped
to the street light’s glow, memory
tightens as you walk down
the harbor, letting its breeze
know your neck.